9.17.2010

next week

Next week is UN Week in New York, where the focus will be on the Millennium Development Goals. We're five years from the date at which they're supposed to be achieved, but there are a lot of questions about which goals will be met, which ones will be unmet, and the reasons for both. I'll be in town for part of the week for several related events and would love to meet Texas in Africa readers who'll be around:

Monday at 11EST, I'll be live-blogging from TEDxChange, an event sponsored by TED and the Gates Foundation. In addition to following here, you can watch a live stream of the event here, follow Tweets with the hashtag #tedxchange, or attend one of dozens of viewing parties happening in communities all over the world (and I mean all over the world - Soweto, Kibera, Accra, Abuja, and Lusaka are the sites on the African continent).

There's a Tweet-up of folks who are interested in international development on Tuesday night at Maggie's Place, 5:30-8:30. I'll be there for the first bit and would love to meet anyone who can come out. RSVP here.

Despite that fact that I'm in no way cool enough to be doing any of this (and have no idea what to wear), I'm excited about getting to hear from many leaders in the field and am hoping that some critical questions about the MDG's will be discussed over the course of the week. I'm particularly interested in the question of achieving the MDG's in extremely fragile states and thinking about new ways to improve public services in the absence of functioning state institutions.

I may also have the opportunity to ask some questions of these leaders directly, so if there's something you'd like asked, be sure to leave a comment here.

2 Comments:

Love your title. I am from Texas and am a leader at the United Nations Foundation. I will be speaking at the Social Good Summit on Monday. Come introduce yourself. Elizabeth Gore or connect on facebook